standing about the door--students
from other classes, town girls, the young instructor in French,
German, and music; a couple of town club-women in glasses and galoshes
and woolen stockings bunchy at the ankles. Every one was rapidly
whispering, watching every one else, peeping often at the platform and
the small door beside it through which Professor Frazer would enter.
Carl had a smile ready for him. But there was no chance that the smile
would be seen. There must have been a hundred and fifty in the room,
seated and standing, though there were but seventy in the course, and
but two hundred and fifty-six students in the whole college that year.

Carl looked back. He clenched his fist and pounded the soft side of it
on his thigh, drawing in his breath, puffing it out with a long
exasperated "Hellll!" For the Greek professor, the comma-sized,
sandy-whiskered martinet, to whom nothing that was new was moral and
nothing that was old was to be questioned by any undergraduate,
stalked into the room like indignant Napoleon posing before two guards
and a penguin at St. Helena. A student in the back row thriftily gave
the Greek god his seat. The god sat down, with a precise nod.
Instantly a straggly man with a celluloid collar left the group by the
door, whisked over to the Greek professor, and fawned upon him. It was
the fearless editor and owner (also part-time type-setter) of the
_Plato Weekly Times_, who dated back to the days of Washington
flat-bed hand-presses and pure Jeffersonian politics, and feared
neither man nor devil, though he was uneasy in the presence of his
landlady. He ostentatiously flapped a wad of copy-paper in his left
hand, and shook a spatter of ink-drops from a fountain-pen as he
interviewed the Greek professor, who could be seen answering
pompously. Carl was hating them both, fearing the Greek as a faculty
spy on Frazer, picturing himself kicking the editor, when he was aware
of a rustling all over the room, of a general turning of heads toward
the platform.

He turned. He was smiling like a shy child in his hero-worship.
Professor Frazer was inconspicuously walking through the low door
beside the platform. Frazer's lips were together. He was obviously
self-conscious. His motions were jerky. He elaborately did not look at
the audience. He nearly stumbled on the steps up to the platform. His
hand shook as he drew papers from a leather portfolio and arranged
them on the small reading-table. One of the